The third season of ''
Family Guy
''Family Guy'' is an American animated sitcom originally conceived and created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The show centers around the Griffin family, Griffins, a dysfunctional family consisting of parents Peter Griff ...
'' first aired on the
Fox
Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush'').
Twelve sp ...
network in 22 episodes from July 11, 2001, to November 9, 2003, before being released as a DVD box set and in syndication. It premiered with the episode "The Thin White Line" and finished with "Family Guy Viewer Mail #1". An episode that was not part of the season's original broadcast run, "
When You Wish Upon a Weinstein
"When You Wish Upon a Weinstein" is the twenty-second episode of ''Family Guy''s third season, and the original series finale. The episode was intended to air on Fox during 2000, but Fox's executives expressed concern due to the content's potentia ...
", was included on the DVD release and later shown on both
Adult Swim
Adult Swim (AS; stylized as dult swim
Dult is a village in Batala in Gurdaspur district of Punjab State, India. It is located from sub district headquarter, from district headquarter and from Sri Hargobindpur. The village is administrated by Sarpanch an elected representati ...
and often abbreviated as s is an American adult-oriented night-time cable television Television channel, channel that shares channel space with the basic cable network Cartoon Network and is programme ...
and Fox. The third season of ''
Family Guy
''Family Guy'' is an American animated sitcom originally conceived and created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The show centers around the Griffin family, Griffins, a dysfunctional family consisting of parents Peter Griff ...
'' continues the adventures of the dysfunctional
Griffin family
The Griffin family is a fictional family which appears in the List of animated television series, animated television series ''Family Guy''. The Griffins are a dysfunctional family consisting of the married couple Peter Griffin, Peter and Lois G ...
—father
Peter, mother
Lois
Lois is a common English name from the New Testament. Paul the Apostle mentions Lois, the pious grandmother of Saint Timothy in the Second Epistle to Timothy (commending her for her faith in 2 Timothy 1:5). The name was first used by English C ...
, daughter
Meg
Meg is a feminine given name, often a short form of Megatron, Megan, Megumi (Japanese), etc. It may refer to:
People
*Meg (singer), a Japanese singer
*Meg Cabot (born 1967), American author of romantic and paranormal fiction
*Meg Burton Cahill ( ...
, son
Chris, baby
Stewie and
Brian, the family dog, who reside in their hometown of
Quahog
The hard clam (''Mercenaria mercenaria''), also known as the round clam, hard-shell (or hard-shelled) clam, or the quahog, is an edible marine bivalve mollusk that is native to the eastern shores of North America and Central America from Prince ...
.
The
executive producer
Executive producer (EP) is one of the top positions in the making of a commercial entertainment product. Depending on the medium, the executive producer may be concerned with management accounting or associated with legal issues (like copyrights o ...
s for the third production season were
Dan Palladino and series creator
Seth MacFarlane
Seth Woodbury MacFarlane (; born October 26, 1973) is an American actor, animator, filmmaker, comedian, and singer. He is the creator and star of the television series ''Family Guy'' (since 1999) and ''The Orville'' (since 2017), and co-creator ...
. The aired season also contained nine episodes which were holdovers from season two, which were produced by MacFarlane and
David Zuckerman.
Although ''Family Guy'' was initially canceled in 2000 due to low
ratings, following a last-minute reprieve, the series returned for a third season in 2001. The series was canceled again in 2002; however, high ratings on Adult Swim and high DVD sales renewed Fox's interest in the series. The series returned for a total of 30 new episodes in 2005.
The episode "
Brian Wallows and Peter's Swallows" won an
Emmy Award
The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...
for Best Song. Creator MacFarlane, the recipient of the award, noted that the episode's director
Dan Povenmire deserved to have received the award for the contribution the visuals made to the episode's win. Povenmire responded humorously, "That's a nice sentiment and all, but did he offer to give me his? No! And it's not like he doesn't already have two of his own just sitting in his house!"
Production
![Seth MacFarlane by Gage Skidmore 5](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Seth_MacFarlane_by_Gage_Skidmore_5.jpg)
''Family Guy'' was first canceled in 2000 following the series'
second season, but following a last-minute reprieve, it returned for a third season in 2001. In 2002, the series was canceled again after three seasons due to low
ratings.
Fox attempted to sell the rights for reruns of the show, but it was difficult to find networks that were interested;
Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network (often abbreviated as CN) is an American cable television channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. It is a part of The Cartoon Network, Inc., a division that also has the broadcasting and production activities of Boomerang, Car ...
eventually bought the rights, " basically for free", according to the president of 20th Century Fox Television Production.
When the reruns were shown on Cartoon Network's
Adult Swim
Adult Swim (AS; stylized as dult swim
Dult is a village in Batala in Gurdaspur district of Punjab State, India. It is located from sub district headquarter, from district headquarter and from Sri Hargobindpur. The village is administrated by Sarpanch an elected representati ...
and often abbreviated as s is an American adult-oriented night-time cable television Television channel, channel that shares channel space with the basic cable network Cartoon Network and is programme ...
in 2003, ''Family Guy'' became Adult Swim's most-watched show with an average 1.9 million viewers an episode.
Following ''Family Guy''s high ratings on Adult Swim, the first two seasons were released on DVD in April 2003.
Sales of the DVD set reached 2.2 million copies, becoming the best-selling television DVD of 2003
and the second highest-selling television DVD ever, behind the first season of
Comedy Central
Comedy Central is an American basic cable channel owned by Paramount Global through its network division's MTV Entertainment Group unit, based in Manhattan. The channel is geared towards young adults aged 18–34 and carries comedy programming ...
's ''
Chappelle's Show
''Chappelle's Show'' is an American sketch comedy television series created by comedians Dave Chappelle and Neal Brennan, with Chappelle hosting the show and starring in the majority of its sketches. Chappelle, Brennan, and Michele Armour were th ...
''.
The third season DVD release also sold more than a million copies.
The show's popularity in both DVD sales and reruns rekindled Fox's interest in it. They ordered 35 new episodes in 2004, marking the first revival of a television show based on DVD sales.
Fox president
Gail Berman said that it was one of her most difficult decisions to cancel the show, and was therefore happy it would return.
The network also began production of a film based on the series.
Dan Povenmire, who became a director on ''
Family Guy
''Family Guy'' is an American animated sitcom originally conceived and created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The show centers around the Griffin family, Griffins, a dysfunctional family consisting of parents Peter Griff ...
'' during the series' second season,
took a more prominent role in directing by the third season, having directed five episodes. Creator
Seth MacFarlane
Seth Woodbury MacFarlane (; born October 26, 1973) is an American actor, animator, filmmaker, comedian, and singer. He is the creator and star of the television series ''Family Guy'' (since 1999) and ''The Orville'' (since 2017), and co-creator ...
granted Povenmire substantial creative freedom. Povenmire recalled that MacFarlane would tell him "We've got two minutes to fill. Give me some visual gags. Do whatever you want. I trust you." Povenmire praised this management style for letting him "have
..fun." Povenmire brought realism, and material from his own experiences, to the visual direction of ''Family Guy''.
[ Callaghan, p. 174][ Callaghan, p. 142] For "One If by Clam, Two If by Sea", several characters carried out fosse moves in prison — Povenmire went into the office of a color artist, Cynthia Macintosh, who had been a professional dancer, and had her strike poses in order for him to better illustrate the sequence.
In the episode "
To Love and Die in Dixie
"To Love and Die in Dixie" is the 12th episode of the third season of the animated comedy series '' Family Guy''. Country music singer Waylon Jennings, who died three months after the episode aired on television in the United States, guest-stars i ...
" Povenmire drew on his childhood in the deep south to sequence a background scene where the "
redneck" character nonchalantly kicks a
corpse into the nearby
river
A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of wate ...
.
Episodes
Reception
The episode "
Brian Wallows and Peter's Swallows" won an
Emmy Award
The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...
for Best Song. Creator MacFarlane, the recipient of the award, noted that the episode's director
Dan Povenmire deserved to have received the award for the contribution the visuals made to the episode's win. Povenmire jokingly responded "That's a nice sentiment and all, but did he offer to give me his? No! And it's not like he doesn't already have two of his own just sitting in his house!"
[Callaghan, pp. 194]
The third season has received positive reviews from critics. In his review for the ''Family Guy'' Volume 2 DVD, Aaron Beierle of
DVD Talk stated "Often brilliant, extremely witty and darkly hilarious, ''Family Guy'' was unfortunately cancelled after Fox bumped it around six or seven different time slots. Although this third season wasn't as consistent as the first two, it's still hilarious and fans of the show should definitely pick up this terrific set."
References
;Specific
;General
*
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Family Guy (Season 3)
Family Guy seasons
2001 American television seasons
2002 American television seasons
2003 American television seasons